


Beat the Dog Before the Lion

by PandaPaladin



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Royalty, F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I promise Kara's gonna be fine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-07-30 23:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20105317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PandaPaladin/pseuds/PandaPaladin
Summary: Lena Luthor doesn't make fast friends, especially when she spends most of her time on her family's manor. Yet she can't help but be drawn to the new maid, a girl with pretty eyes that left her smitten. Her family appoints her as Lena's whipping girl, a scapegoat for every little mistake she makes.Kara promised her that the lashes weren't as bad as they looked. All she needed to feel better was Lena's smile.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is so self-indulgent that it’s funny LMAO. Basically, a fic where Lena is of royalty and Kara is her whipping girl, maybe set around the 1800s for point of reference. I don’t know if whipping girls even existed but??? Whatever, I’ll make it work lmao. Disclaimer: I’m not a historian! Or well pro-versed in history of any kind so I’m taking a leap in the dark with a royalty/medieval au. Let’s just call it creative liberty, for your sake and mine. Enjoy!
> 
> (With whipping girl fics, there's bound to be some form of violence. Not explicit, but it is mentioned)

Lena Luthor was four years old when she stole her father’s favourite fountain pen.

Her new adoptive family, of course, took this as a sign of her first transgression of many. They didn’t exactly trust her as much as their beloved Lex. They ordered her out of the castle with a servant, to wait idly in their garden. Lena wasn’t fond of the idea of waiting and tricked her servant to turn her back long enough for her nimble self to disappear. 

“—we will do no such thing!” Lionel’s voice hissed through the large wooden doors of the Luthors’ personal chambers.

Lena flinched backwards but planted her feet stonily on the ground. She was old enough to know what she did was wrong, yet too young to understand that in her new home, nothing outside of regular procedure was to be tolerated. In fact, she had never heard her father’s voice sound so distressed and _ tired. _

“Lionel, she snuck into the Great Chamber, _ stole _your belongings— yet you wish to let this go unnoticed?” her step-mother’s voice hissed right back. Lillian Luthor wasn’t known to be the more forgiving one of the pair. Especially to her illegitimate daughter, Lena. 

“It was only my pen,” Lionel replied tiredly. There was a beat of a pause, then, “She’s _ four, _Lillian. Yes, I will reprimand her myself and find the best tutors in this country to teach her better, but don’t you think a whipping is too much?”

“Obviously, she’s too small for a proper caning. I was talking about lashes on her palms, two on each hand. It’s what my friends used to do with their kids.” 

Lena’s bottom lip trembled. The way her step-mother spoke, so matter-of-factly and calm, about _ beating _her— she had to take a step back from the door. She was about to bolt, perhaps to find a way out of the castle for good, when Lionel sighed, the sound of a goblet smacking against a table. 

“I’ll find her a whipping girl.”

Lena could already visualize the smirk plastered on Lillian’s face. 

* * *

Lena was eight years old when she studied privately with another friend. Samantha, or Sam, Arias, her best friend in the entire world. While Lena was the daughter of a lord, Sam’s family stayed on the Luthors’ manor as farmers and caretakers. They became instant friends one night when Lena caught her sleeping under a tree. Lena immediately requested that Sam was taught alongside her. Although surprised that her parents let this happen without so much as a blink, she was ecstatic.

They were taught how to speak Latin, French, Spanish, and Russian. Sam struggled to even keep up by Lena’s heels, every day a challenge to memorize a whole manuscript of words in a strange prose. And everyday, their tutor marveled at Lena’s quick understanding. Lena preened every time her tutor would smile brightly at her for perfecting a sentence, or the way she managed to win a round of chess in a couple of turns.

Sam was never jealous. Hell, she basked in her friend’s intelligence. After their sessions, she would take Lena by the hand and take her to the market. They would compare the apples on the stands, grimacing and making faces at each other when they would find one that unearthed a worm in its red shell. 

Sometimes, Lena even felt bad. She ate three times a day, sometimes a snack in between, her meals lavish and exported from all parts of the world, while people on the streets (“Dirty proles,” her step-mother had snarled when one accidentally bumped into her shoulder) would pay half their day’s salary to buy an apple with a worm in it. 

So, she bought a dozen apples, using the spare money in her coat’s pocket. The farmer’s eyes were as big as saucers, and Lena couldn’t help but giggle to herself when he took her hand in his and shook viciously. 

A servant out on an errand caught her passing bright, red apples to dirtied factory children. 

Sam was given seven lashes on the back.

Lena never did it again.

* * *

Her third transgression happened by complete accident. Lena fell asleep at her desk before completing the essay on Russian leadership, and Sam was separated from her to be prepared for a caning. 

Her feet dragged her to Lex’s chambers, tears in her eyes and feeling as if a whole apple was lodged in her throat. Lex put down his feathered pen and gave his sister his full attention, leaning back on his chair while she sputtered out her situation. He tapped his chin with a finger.

Lena told him that she didn’t mean to neglect her work, that she was an honest student, that it wouldn’t happen again. She didn’t want Sam to be beaten for her, she wanted it to be _ her. _ She understood she wasn’t allowed to be caned because she was the daughter of an important man, that this was a milder punishment, but she wholeheartedly believed that she would rather be fed to crocodiles than hear Sam scream and cry again. 

“Do you want my sincere advice, sis?” Lex said quietly. His voice was always as calm as his mother’s. Lena could only nod mutely. “Let go of your emotions. Pretend you still like her and keep being her friend, by all means, but…” He shrugged at her and leaned closer. 

“It’ll only hurt you to see someone you care about get beaten. So, just don’t. Care.”

* * *

Her father died from mysterious causes when she was shy of eighteen. His funeral was in service just that morning. Her brother took up the family’s responsibility almost immediately after Lionel’s death was announced to them, not one heartbeat of a moment to grieve. 

But Lena wasn’t as strong as her brother, not as emotionless as him. She was always tied down by her feelings, something she struggled with for years. So she sobbed and cried in her bedroom, refusing to let a single servant come in to get her ready for bed. 

“Miss Luthor?”

Lena sobered up, sniffling the remnants of her tears. She was sitting on her chair, elbows on her desk. Quickly, she wiped away snot and tears and looked over at her door. She bit down on her tongue from snapping out a hideous retort, and instead mustered up the words to tell the prying servant to leave her be.

But the chamber doors opened to a beautiful, blue-eyed girl. Her blonde hair was done up in a bun, her hands carrying a silver plate of bread and soup. Lena doesn’t recognize her, but her shy smile and friendly demeanour helped her relax. “I was told by everyone in here that you didn’t want any company,” the girl said softly. “But I felt bad for not trying at least, you know? So I brought you some comfort food.”

Lena turned around fully to look at her. She looked about her age, but certainly carried less of a… royal posture, if that made any logical sense. So this girl wasn’t a family friend staying over to grieve her father. “Who are you?” Lena croaked out, her voice still dry from her sobbing.

“Oh! Sorry.” The girl flashed her another smile. She set Lena’s food down on the dresser beside the door, and wrung her hands in front of her. “I’m Kara. Kara Danvers. My family was just hired to live in your castle as servants.”

That rang bells in Lena’s head. “Is your sister Alex Danvers?”

“Adoptive, but we’re close.”

Lena barked out a laugh. “Well, she’s definitely not a servant. She was just hired by those shady knights after fighting in a pub, wasn’t she?”

Kara smiled at her apologetically. “Thank you for letting her stay here anyway. I mean, it’s not like she couldn’t find another place to stay! It’s just that…” She made a face. “We’re stronger together,” she settled on.

Lena found it a little odd that she phrased it that way. The longer she thought about it, the odder she found Kara’s slight accent. She herself had problems with the American accent for a while. But she couldn’t place Kara’s place of origin, no matter how hard she tried. 

Kara caught her staring. “Are you okay?” she asked, an undertone of worry in her voice.

“I’m fine,” she reassured Kara. “Just a bit tired.”

“Do you mind if I stay here for a while?”

Lena was giving her an odd look. Kara only shrugged at her, her lips turned up in a friendly smile. She was the first person in twenty-four hours that sedated Lena’s nerves. And for the first time since being told, she didn’t think about her father. 

Before she can protest, Kara was sitting at the edge of her, right across from her desk. Her fingers gripped the slope of her neatly-made sheets, but she didn’t seem to mind that she was breaking at least seven rules by doing so. No servant was allowed to do this kind of thing. Yet Lena just smiled back at her.

“I may have a bit of an upper hand when it comes to moping over stuff,” Kara declared, her bright eyes twinkling with mischief. “I don’t know my way around the castle, but you clearly do— I think?”

Lena tilted her head at her. “What are you proposing, Kara?”

Kara’s grin only grew twice as big at her prodding. She was practically bouncing on Lena’s bed. “Well, _ your highness _, I was thinking that we could take some of those thick banners off your throne room and borrow them for a while, you know, do some sledding, something like that.” Kara’s voice was teasing, and every part of the girl’s posture and being yelled rebellion.

On the flip side, Lena’s brain was thinking quite the opposite. She was the daughter of the late Lionel Luthor, the duke of National City. Any time she steps out of line, her family has no hesitation to punish her to unravel her mistakes. She had flashes of memories of a crying Sam bent over a table, being given an improper lash on the back just for simply speaking out of turn. Her other friends too, all being subjected to the abuse of a whip or paddle for something she did. They didn’t hate her as much as she knew it to be deserved because they were paid in handfuls of coins for every time they cried louder for her to hear. 

She stopped making friends, and her friends drifted away from her. There was only Sam, though she had moved away across the country with her family, only leaving the occasional letter in her wake.

Kara was still staring at her, her eyes big with expectation. She knew it was the proper thing for her to say no, but there was something in this girl that made her stop and reconsider. Kara knew that she was turning it over and over in her head like a flat stone, so she spoke up. “It’s midnight, Miss Luthor. Nobody’s awake and all the servants are in the lower wing to prepare the big goodbye feast for tomorrow.”

“Call me Lena, please,” she said gently. She cleared her throat, regarding Kara with a wary look. “I hope you know the banners are cemented by their poles against the stone.”

She expected Kara to deflate. Instead, the girl clasped her hands together and rubbed them, the look in her eyes making it clear that she was scheming something devious. “That’s what makes it fun.”

Before she could blink, Kara had jumped up and grabbed her wrist, urging the girl onto her feet. They almost knocked over Kara’s forgotten comfort food as they slipped out of her room, though Kara quickly steadied the rocking of her dresser and they giggled together as they passed the many doors of the hallway.

It was eerily quiet in Lena’s castle, as it always has been since the first day she arrived. It quickly made her think of her father, and her heart felt like a sack of bricks tied to her chest once more. 

Kara caught the frown playing on Lena’s lips. Her fingers were still curled around Lena’s wrist, and they gripped her wrist harder in a solemn attempt at solidarity. “I heard he’s a great man,” Kara said to the stale wind around them. It echoed, causing Kara to cringe under the noise. 

“He was,” came Lena’s bitter answer. 

Kara glanced at her for a brief moment. Their footsteps echoed across the vast space of the Great Hall, no matter how much they tried to squander the noise by tip-toeing. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry,” Kara said genuinely. 

Lena tugged her to the left, silently leading them in the right direction. “It’s fine, really. It’s just that his death is… recent. I need more time to grieve,” Lena told her, her voice a low hum of noise.

Kara’s brow creased. She was looking at Lena like that again. Not in pity, but as if she wanted to confess something. It was evident that Kara changed her mind when she looked straight ahead, giving Lena the silence she needed to think about this whole situation.

Fortunately, there wasn’t enough time for her to change her mind. They stopped at the banners hung up way in the air, both of them having to crane their necks nearly ninety degrees to even see the top. The banner’s length stopped short of their ankles, but it reached so high into the air that Lena wondered if it went on forever. Kara was squinting at it, her knuckles brushing Lena’s as they stood side by side, no one saying a word. Then Kara’s eyes glanced left and right, the gears turning in her head as she stepped forward and pressed a palm against the cool chiseled stone.

“You’re thinking of climbing,” Lena said, the realization dawning on her when Kara hooked her fingers over the bare centimeter lip of the stone. The inside of the throne room didn’t look as pretty as others, hence the uneven walls. Her family’s heritage wasn’t concerned with kings— they merely worked with one. King Kal-El barely visited them, anyway. 

“Yep! Give me a boost?” Kara asked, pivoting to face her. She was still smiling. Her hands were on her hips.

“Kara, didn’t you hear me? The banners are bolted down.” Does this girl ever listen to reason?

“I’m stronger than I look.”

  
“_Bolts, _Kara.”

“Are you gonna give me a boost or not?” Kara whined.

Lena made a split second decision. On one hand, if Kara climbed up and fell, the worst that can happen is that she got a concussion. On the other hand, they might get caught and Lena will be punished, again, though she didn’t know what random person they’ll pick from her wheel of acquaintances to punish (not that she cared… anymore). On the other _ other _hand—

She helped Kara up.

How could she not, when Kara was smiling at her like that?

Kara grunted with the effort and Lena ignored the pain in her palm as Kara stretched up to her full height, flailing for a couple seconds before regaining her balance and palming the highest ledge she reached. She pushed herself up, placed her footing flat against the floor, and climbed her way parallel with the banner like she was a monkey that Lena saw on her first nature trip with her family.

Lena could only watch in awe. Kara was fast, almost like a blur as she shimmied herself about ten feet in the air before losing her footing the first time. Lena’s heart was a crazy array of wild drumming. Then Kara moved her foot back against a flat surface, and Lena breathed out.

It only took a minute for Kara to reach the pole that held the thick, large banner of her family’s colours. The green stood out from the mute purples of the fabric, and Lena couldn’t help but squeeze her eyes shut. She didn’t know if it was from watching Kara so high up in the air that it made her queasy, or the fact that those colours were all she saw at her father’s public funeral, or a mix of both or neither.

Kara was tugging vigorously at the horizontal steel pole, her face a solid sheet of concentration. When it was no use, she stopped, her shoulders coming up and down with her short breaths. “I _ told you _that they were bolted and you didn’t listen to me!” Lena whisper-shouted.

  
“Lena, hold onto the bottom.”

“_What_?” 

“Just do it!” When Lena stared up at her, incredulous, she added, “Please?”

Lena huffed in disbelief of the company she was with. And also in disbelief of herself, for keeping the company. She moved closer to the banner and gripped the bottom of it, just as instructed. It was a thick construction of wool and careful embroidery. She didn’t have enough time to marvel at the feeling before she heard Kara’s voice once more.

“Now pull it!”

“Kara, have you lost your mind?” she asked, now completely believing that her friend had lost it all.

“Just trust me!”

So she did, though a bit begrudgingly. She pulled, only with half her might, because she didn’t know what on earth she was doing this for. When she heard a little snap of a cord, her head looked upwards and into the playful blue eyes of Kara Danvers. “Keep going!” Kara egged.

Lena pulled with twice the effort, curling the fabric over her knuckles to get more grip. When she looked over at Kara, she could see the girl using a small butter knife to cut something along the pole. She was sawing fast and Lena was clearly seeing the progress. Before she could exert herself, the banner came loose and she stumbled backwards with the effort. 

The banner floated onto the ground, and Kara was still gripping the wall with an impish grin.

Kara scaled the wall back down and enveloped Lena in a warm hug. Lena’s breath hitched from the surprise, though she was even _ more _surprised to realize that she liked it. She really, really liked Kara’s hugs.

“I’m not even gonna ask where you got the knife,” Lena laughed against her shoulder. Kara let her go, her hands on Lena’s shoulders. Lena put her hand over Kara’s, almost instinctively.

“I was working in the kitchen this morning.” Kara grinned. “I think I quite like being your servant. Shall we hoist our treasure over the Great Stairs, your majesty?” she declared in an overly-grand voice.

Lena was smiling back at her. “I think we shall.”

* * *

Lena withered under her brother’s stare. “Lex, I—”

“I really hope you know that Father’s probably turning over in his grave right now,” Lex said blandly.

“It was a mistake!” she sputtered out. Lena kept playing with her hands in her lap, wanting to sink further into her chair. Lex was giving her a look, hands clasped on the desk that situated itself between them. Lex’s personal chambers always had a strained air in it, whether it was from the strewn parchments on the floor or the swords and weapons casually positioned in the corner. Right now, Lena couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge it. 

She was too bothered by the way Lex was looking at her, the same way Lillian looks at her whenever she twitched a single finger out of line. 

She missed her father too much to deal with this.

“Lena, I don’t care that it’s a mistake, I mean it’s— it’s the fact you did this while we had _ guests _in the castle!” Lex said incredulously. He was pinching the bridge of his nose, looking less and less like the carefree brother she had and more of the duke he was groomed to be. 

When Lena kept silent, Lex kept going, digging her grave further and further under the ground. “I made a promise to you that I would still be your brother after I take responsibility for the family. Which means _ you _ choose your tutors. _ You _ choose what you learn. _ You _ choose where you wanna go, _ you _choose what to do with your life.” He sighed, clasping his palms flat and pressing his nose in it, eyes closed as if he was praying.

“But I have to be responsible for your punishments too.”

“You can’t be serious,” Lena said, a dry laugh downplaying in her throat. She was tenser than ever.

“Unfortunately, I am.” Lex opened his eyes and looked over at her, his lips pursed in a tight line. “The girl you were with, uh… Kara Danvers!” He snapped his fingers for remembering the name, his charismatic smile plastered on his face. “She’s your new whipping girl. But—!” He signaled Lena to sit down when she stood up in a flurry of panic, and he continued. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to call for her to be strapped to a log and be caned. Just a public gathering, if you can even call it that. Some of the guests who stayed one more night to grieve Father with us, they’ll watch her get lashed lightly on the palms, and whoop-de-doo, they’ll go home and we’ll forget this ever happened. They just need to think that we take discipline seriously, that’s all.”

“I’ve only _ just _ met her,” Lena said steadily, willing her voice to stop shaking, “and you’re going to punish her on her first day? She’s barely a _ friend _, Lex, let alone—”

“Let alone that seeing her lashed will affect you?” Lex chuckled. “Please, Lena, save it for your teachers. I’m your brother. Okay? I know exactly how you look when you care about someone. You aren’t exactly an actress.”

Lena held her tongue. “When are you calling for her to get beaten?”

“Whoa, calm down. We aren’t beating her. I have enough love for you to tell the guards to do it nicely.”

“Wow, thanks,” she said sarcastically.

Lex only rolled his eyes at her. “Later tonight, before the banquet. And, _ and, _before you say your gracious thanks to me again, I made sure she wasn’t punished any more than for later tonight. In fact, she’s probably in the kitchen making us some food.”

“Thank you, Lex.” She sounded sincere this time, and Lex gave her a half smile. She got up and left his chambers, her chest still a bundle of tight nerves. She made her way to the kitchen, following the scent of freshly baked bread.

Kara was just outside of the kitchen, clumsily balancing two plates on her sleeves and another two in her hands. When she saw Lena, she almost knocked them over in an effort to look at her. “Lena!”

Lena laughed as she slid the four plates onto a cart, almost dropping each of them at various points in her effort. “For someone working as a maid, you aren’t very graceful, Kara,” she teased.

Kara huffed, straightening out her dress and patting it down from the flour sticking to the front. “I wasn’t always your humble servant, you know.”

“You’ve been here for a day, so of course I know.”

“You know what I mean,” Kara groaned. She gripped the long handle of the cart, and rocked it slightly from front to back, but kept her eyes on Lena. “I was a messenger before coming to your manor.”

Lena arched an eyebrow to her. She folded her arms across her chest. “What made you come here, if I could ask?”

Kara jutted out her bottom lip, thinking to herself. “Eliza, my adop— my mom, she needed to work. My dad disappeared a few years ago, and money was running short. So we took up the job your family was offering. Thankfully, we didn’t go very far. All my friends are within a messenger pigeon’s reach.” She was smiling again.

“Hmm.” Lena nodded to Kara’s story, for once being interested in the tale of another person’s life. She heard too many during her family’s forced interactions with the land. Suddenly, a wave of nausea came over her. She remembered the reason why she came here and it made her stomach settle back in an odd way. 

Seeing Lena’s sudden drop in mood, Kara’s smile dropped. “Is something wrong?”

Her arms were hugging her chest, the air in her lungs feeling as tight as ever. “We got caught,” she whispered, almost as if it was a curse to say out loud.

“Yeah, I figured. I’m really sorry,” Kara apologized, her eyebrows a tight knit of concern. “I heard you got the full brunt of it.”

“Not exactly,” Lena said bitterly. “In fact, it’s you who I should be apologizing to. This entire situation, it’s— God, I’m so sorry. We _ just _met and you were the first person who tried to bring my spirits up again, and you’re getting punished for it, and—”

“Lena, come on. It’s okay,” Kara told her gently. “I would do it all over again, no hesitation.”

That made her stomach do a mini flip. But it still didn’t help with her dread. She drew in a shaky breath, and admitted what she came here for. “You’re my whipping girl now. You’re getting a lashing in about two hours.”

Kara stayed silent. Her face didn’t show as much panic as Lena was expecting, only a layer of solemn compliance. “I would still do it all over again,” she finally said, her voice nothing above a soft whisper. “I liked seeing you smile.”

“You don’t deserve this,” Lena insisted.

Kara shrugged. “A whipping girl is someone that’s close to you, right?”

“Of course.”

“And then I’m glad.”

To say that Lena was confused was an understatement. “Why?” she stammered out.

Kara was giving her that big, goofy smile again. But this time, Lena didn’t feel the glow in her chest. She felt a heavy pressure on her chest, a sense of guilt. “Because it means I’m your friend, duh,” Kara laughed. Lena watched her, her mouth slightly agape.

“And I like being your friend,” Kara admitted. “And honestly? I think I’d even take a bullet for you.”

* * *

Lena was sat at the front among her guests to watch the lashing. She wanted so badly to put her head in her hands, or to squeeze her eyes shut and block all the noise out. She couldn’t, of course, because each guard on either side of her was keeping a close eye, making sure she had a full view of what was happening.

People around her were grimacing and murmuring amongst themselves as the guard readied Kara, instructing her to hold her hands out, palms up. Another man was holding Kara’s wrists to prevent her from swiping them away. 

There was a crackle of a small whip, and Lena’s shoulders jolted and stiffened. 

She held her breath, and a second crackle whipped against Kara’s other hand. 

That was it.

The air felt cold around her, the mass of people gathered in the hall making her feel small and cramped. The fireplace adjacent to her crackled warmly, though she could barely feel the heat radiating off from it. She could only focus on the crackle of the logs, miniature versions of the noises she was hearing just a moment ago. 

She forced herself to look into Kara’s eyes.

Kara was staring at her hands, almost as if in fascination. There was no pain evident on her face, but there was a small trickle of sweat along her temple. Her left palm was brightly red, more so than her right. Lena exhaled painfully, though much more relieved that Kara wasn’t given a more severe punishment. 

After all, destroying a banner was commonly punished by bloody stoning.

When Kara caught her staring, her eyes snapped up to peer into hers. She smiled warmly at Lena, as if to say, _ I’m okay. _

The hands on her shoulders disappeared and Lena exhaled with relief. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO, maybe I lied. Definitely longer than three chapters, maybe around five? Fluff and hurt/comfort will be brought to you next chapter I proMISE

“What’s that?”

“A halberd.”

“Oh. Then what’s that?”

“A battle axe.”

“Huh. Then—?”

Alex pivoted on her heel and faced her sister with a huff. In return, Kara gave her a shrew smile. “Why are you asking so many questions?” 

“You know the answer. I want to learn with you,” Kara said matter-of-factly. As if that wasn’t what she told her sister for the last twenty-four hours. 

“And you know _ my _answer,” Alex said pointedly, to which Kara groaned and fell backwards onto the pallet before her. “You’re not allowed to learn! I’m sorry, but it’s too dangerous.”

“You say that _ every _time I bring it up. It can’t be that dangerous if you have an entire rack of weapons in your room,” Kara told her, staring up at the ceiling above her. She raised her arm out of boredom, pretending to touch the cracked ceiling before dropping it beside her. Alex was walking around her, unpacking and organizing her things in her small little room. 

“That’s because I was brought up like this,” Alex said, a slight edge of pride in her voice. Kara groaned again. Alex always brought it up— she was always proud that she was one of the first ladies in the DEO (an acronym Kara can honestly barely remember, maybe a latin phrase?), mostly because she was taught by her father in hand-to-hand combat basically the moment she was birthed.

Tired of watching the dull ceiling, Kara sat back up and tucked her legs under her. She was watching Alex examine a longsword, her sister’s eyes focused on the glint of the blade. “You know I was technically brought up the same way you did, right?” she pointed out. Alex barely gave her a second look. “On Krypton, girls were allowed to touch swords and nobody would scream ‘witch’. Kal-El even taught me.”

Her cousin Kal-El. She couldn’t help but grin to herself in gleeful pride. While Alex puffed out her chest and glowed under the praises of her brilliant blacksmith and combatant father, Kara had to silently praise her cousin in the dark. Their kingdom was overruled by barbarians, leading to many of her family’s deaths. She and Kal-El ran until they could find the nearest kingdom, and Kal-El grew up under the knight’s name of Clark. Then he became King of Metropolis, and sometimes brought Kara presents from time to time. 

“Hello? Earth to Kara?” Alex waved her hand in front of Kara’s face.

Kara snapped back to reality and gave her sister another smile. “Did you say something?” she asked stupidly.

“I said, your cousin was the one who told you to lay low. Remember that?” Alex said, sitting on the pallet with her. Kara twisted her body to look at her sister, bringing her knees up to her chest. The low glow of the candle light on the dresser provided the shadows on Alex’s face. “Don’t you know what could happen to you if you got hurt? Or found out?”

“Well, the getting hurt part isn’t really a concern,” Kara said sarcastically. “I’m Lena Luthor’s new whipping girl.” She didn’t mean to sound bitter or anything. She was just trying to make a point. 

Clearly, Alex took that in a different light. She sighed, rubbing the side of her face with her wrist. “That, I’m not too concerned with. The girl is an angel by disciplinary standards. What I _ am _worried about though is—” She put a hand on Kara’s shoulder. “You can’t be a hero. Kal-El already is. Just live your life. Don’t you like it here?”

Kara shrugged her sister’s hand off. She bristled under Alex’s words. “I like it a lot better than your dad’s empty castle,” she said with a laugh. “But I don’t know… I just want something more than this. I thought that maybe being a writer for people and hopping from farm to farm with a satchel full of parchment was my calling, I mean— Kal-El did it! But Kal also became a knight, and a personal servant, and…”

“You’re not his living shadow, Kara,” Alex insisted. “You said you wanted to be a maid because it was closer to your friends, and you got it. What else do you want?”

“To pick up a sword!” Kara blurted out. Alex’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, and Kara couldn’t help but ramble on with her words. “I want to help people, Alex. Remember when we almost got robbed and we basically robbed _ them _ ? I’ve never felt so _ alive _since then. And it’s not like I never learned how to fight or use weapons—”

“Kara.” Alex was laughing. She only continued to speak once Kara’s words died down. “I get it. Okay? Basics won’t keep you alive in a real battle. I really don’t like the idea of you holding something like a spear, but I know you’re just gonna go behind my back and take something from my room anyway.”

Kara only smiled apologetically. 

“I only have one condition if I teach you,” Alex warned.

“Which is?”

“You can’t tell J’onn.”

* * *

The doors burst open and poured in sunlight into the dark shoemaker’s room. “Christ, Kara, do you ever knock?” Winn shrieked, sucking painfully on the finger that he accidentally hammered on.

“Sorry, sorry! Are you busy?” Kara asked him, closing the door after her. The window up above Winn’s house was the only thing that let light in. The fireplace that sat adjacent to Winn was unlit. 

“Other than making my living wage, no,” Winn told her sarcastically. He put down his mallet and the leather he was working on. 

“Okay, fine, let me rephrase this.” Kara took a deep breath, her eyes twinkling with a type of madness that only showed when she was really damn excited. “Do you have time to hear about your best pal’s experience of holding a mace?”

“Best pal,” Winn repeated with a snicker. Then her words sunk in, and he looked at her with an appalled look. Kara only grinned back. “_ No _.”

“Yes!” 

“And Alex _ let you _?”

“She did!” Kara’s smiled dropped a tad bit. “I, umm… almost decapitated her when I swung with a sword though.”

Winn laughed, cracking his knuckles as he stood up to face his friend. “Maybe save the decapitating for when you command your own squad?”

It wasn’t a secret between them that Kara had always wanted to become a knight. Or, at least somewhat like a knight— one that protects her kingdom like Kal. If she has to become a vigilante, she wouldn’t mind in the least. 

She surged forward and gave Winn a crushing hug, one that knocked the air from the shoemaker’s lungs and forced him to wheeze and tap her shoulder to get a break. Kara released him and looked at him with another one of her big smiles. “You don’t know how badly I want this!” she told him.

“Yeah, because it’s not like that’s all I’ve heard for the last couple of years,” he said, his sarcasm cladding with the genuine joy in his voice. The corners of his eyes crinkled downwards and his voice became a little lower as he asked, “But hey… I heard that yesterday you got lashings for Lena Luthor. You never told me you were being tutored with her.”

“I wasn’t! It just happened, I guess,” Kara said truthfully. If anything, she was confused too. As lovely as it was to hang out with the girl, she couldn’t help but wonder how _ she _became the whipping girl. Didn’t Lena have other friends? Wasn’t she being taught with other students, or was she being tutored alone, thanks to the prestige of the Luthor name? Kara felt a pang of heartache for her new friend.

Winn, on the other hand, wasn’t having none of it. He arched an eyebrow of her, silently telling her, _ That’s horse shit. What’s the truth? _

“I maybe, kinda, asked her to take down a family banner with me.” Kara hoped her so-very-casual tone would prevent Winn from freaking out. 

“Say what now?”

“Yeah, we…” She cleared her throat as best as she can. “We went to her family’s throne room and took down those big, gigantic ones to slide down the spiral stairs.”

“The throne room!” Winn’s voice was a mixture of cracks and exasperation. “And you only got whips on your palm? You could’ve been thrown into a dungeon for that! Banished!”

“Come on, Winn, it’s Lena,” Kara said soothingly. She rubbed her arm, trying her best to soothe her friend. She felt bad that Winn was always either getting into trouble because of her, or having front row seats _ to _the trouble because of her. “The Luthors may be kinda, you know, callous, but that doesn’t mean they’re gonna throw me in jail forever.”

It looked as if a lightbulb went over Winn’s head. A very bad, very lousy lightbulb. “But they will once you parade around their land and threatening low-life thieves with a heavy sword.”

Kara groaned, sitting down on a wooden chair. It creaked under her weight and Winn grimaced at the noise. “Not if they don’t know it’s me.”

“What?”

“You’re a shoemaker, Winn. That means you know how to make stuff other than shoes, right?”

“Yeah, things like satchels and burlaps and— and chairs, barely,” Winn stammered. He understood the look on Kara’s face, and he clearly wanted no part of it. “Look, the pact we made as kids was for fun! It was nice being ten years old and thinking I would make my best friend’s epochal suit. We’re adults, Kara, and I don’t even know how to make a proper breastplate, or— or—”

“But you can learn!” Kara pointed out excitedly. “Remember when we were teenagers and I told you I wish I had spectacles? I mean, they were ugly but—”

“Hey! That was my _ first _attempt—”

“Exactly! You learned how to wrap glass around wires in a day. Armour isn’t that different from leather making.”

“Kara, you beautiful, naive friend of mine,” Winn groaned. He put his hands in his face, sitting down on another wooden chair beside her. 

“Okay, but get this._ . _It won’t even be armour. I just need something slick.”

“Slick,” Winn repeated. 

“Maybe black? Or a midnight blue to help me blend in. Blue and royal red! No, but that would make people think I was in Kal’s consort…”

“Blue and red.”

  
“You know, something Robin Hood would wear. Maybe. Something I could move in. Something I could _ fight _in,” Kara declared.

Winn only stared at her. “You want me to make you an outfit that wasn’t armour but also armour?”

Kara nodded.

“Good lord, I hate you.”

Kara crossed her arms and grinned in her victory. She patted his shoulder and squeezed it. Getting up, she told him, “I gotta go back to the manor and make sure Lena’s alright. Think about it. Please?”

“Fine,” he grumbled, his voice muffled by the hand in his mouth. 

Kara slipped away from her friend’s quaint abode. Tugging on the front of her dress, she carried it partly up the stairs of the Luthors’ main entrance. She greeted the other maids and manservants she passed by, many of them bustling around to accommodate the nearing supper time. The farmers out on the Luthors’ land were still hard at work, many of them sowing new seeds for a (hopeful) plentiful summer. 

“Where is my corset?” Cat Grant’s assertive voice pierced the air of the marble walls. “If I do not find my corset in the next five minutes, I _ will _make sure the first five servants I see get fired and tossed out of here.”

She was visiting the Luthors to congratulate Lex on his new responsibility. A little late, if Kara thought about it, but she knew Cat Grant was a busy woman. And a very scary, busy one.

She cast her eyes on the ground, refusing to acknowledge the woman in order to save her skin. She only continued breathing when she was well out of Cat’s sight. Unfortunately for her, Cat didn’t need to see her in order to boss her around. 

“You there! Girl with the prostitute hair bun.”

Kara flinched, stopping her foot to take another step. She turned around and plastered on a pretty smile. “Yes, Miss Grant?”

“_ Lady _Grant,” Cat said with a sickly sweet voice. “Go find my corset.” When Kara continued to stare, she regarded Kara with a more annoyed look. “Well? Chop chop, it’s not like the corset is going to go up, up and away from you.”

“Yes, of course, right away,” Kara stammered, adding a quick “Lady Grant” when the woman only stared back at her. 

She made a mental note to apologize to Lena for not checking in sooner, and she was about to make her way to another wing of the castle before she realized something. “Oh, um, Lady Grant?”

Cat Grant stopped walking away from her and looked back at her with a lazy, unbothered look. “What is it, Kiera?”

“Have you tried looking for it in the wardrobe?” 

“Of course I have!” Cat insisted, looking peeved that a maid wouldn’t think of the simplest solution.

“No, ma’am, _ the _wardrobe,” Kara said, her voice cracking under the slightest glower of Cat’s look. She cleared her throat.

“I’m sorry?”

“Lord Lex has a large room for guests to put their belongings. Jewelry, corsets—”

“Then what are you waiting for? Go get it,” Cat snipped.

“Right away,” Kara said quickly, and hurried to the wardrobe room. Huffing from her power walk over, she rested a hand on the knob and budged. She frowned when it made no movement. Of course, her luck would run out and force her to be face to face with a locked closet. She looked around her surroundings. 

When she was satisfied that nobody was watching, she took a step back and kicked right below the doorknob. It swung open with her effort.

She made another mental note to casually stop by the blacksmith and tell him the Luthors needed a new knob.

Kara gave her arm a celebratory pump when she found the pastel pink corset that Cat Grant was known to use, tucked under the many belongings the Lady forced her manservants to handle and bring up to the estate. She grabbed the corset and ran back to where she found Lady Grant, relieved to see she went nowhere except to sit down on a comfortable chair to read a book.

“Ah, Kiera,” Cat said pleasantly. She put her book down and clasped her hands gleefully when she saw the corset in Kara’s hands. She took it and called for a servant to take it to her room, regarding Kara a second glance.

Kara was too busy staring at Cat’s book to realize that the Lady was clearing her throat for her attention, until it happened a second time. _ Pride and Prejudice, _she read silently to herself. Her eyes snapped over at Lady Cat, who was giving her a distinctive look of amusement.

“Do you read, Kiera?” she asked. There was no bite to her tone, just pure curiosity.

“Kara, ma’am,” Kara corrected. “I can pick out words,” she added. It was a half-truth, because Kara was confident in her reading abilities. In fact, she bet she could read and write better than some of the Ladies, though she would only be caught dead if she ever confessed it to someone who wasn’t Alex or a super close friend. After all, a maid with good reading comprehension? Blasphemous.

“Well,” Cat drawled out, her eyes chewing out every feature of Kara’s face. Kara’s cheek twitched under the microscopic stare. “Would you like to learn?”

“I—” Kara’s tongue was tied. She wasn’t expecting a question like that.

  
“Oh, come on, don’t be nervous. If you don’t want to, I wouldn’t put it against you. But if you do, I heard Lady Luthor needs a new partner in her studies.”

“Um… the widow, ma’am?”

“How can you look so smart yet act so dumb is beyond me,” Cat said in exasperation. She tossed her arms up in the air. “Lady _ Lena _Luthor.”

“But she’s so smart!” Kara blurted out. Not a lie. “I would only drag her behind me.”  
  
The look in Cat’s eyes said something different. She turned to her right and snapped her fingers at the closest servant, a middle-aged woman busy with getting rid of Cat’s empty tea cup. “Tell Lord Luthor I need to speak to him. Tell him that I think he should get his ass to letting Lena’s whipping girl actually do some _ real _learning.”

“I— I don’t think that’s really necessary,” Kara told her, nervously glancing as the maid bowed and scurried off.

“What are you talking about? I mean, looking like that, Lady Luthor needs a companion now more than ever, don’t you know?” Cat sipped at a new cup of tea. “You’re already subjected to being her whipping girl. A sacrificial lamb needs a breath of fresh air, meaning you need to learn how to read and write. And I think you’d do just fine beside her.”

Kara didn’t ask what she meant by “looking like _ that _”. Lady Grant whisked her away and ordered her to get more biscuits before she could even muster the courage to ask.

* * *

Three months later, Winn finished her “suit”. It was a light-weight, blue-red work of leather, and the sleeves and shins were outfitted with steel to protect her. A cape was held by golden lapels, which Winn only added when Kara whined about making it look more “hero-y”. The cape itself aided with the aerodynamics for when Kara jumped from tree to building, or at least Winn claims. 

Five months later, kingdoms and lands all over America whispered and gossiped about her midnight persona. They called her Supergirl, an ode to the way she stopped mercenaries without a second look. Some people even say she fights with her bare hands. Other people say that Supergirl was just a wannabe myth, tailored by young girls wanting a dainty Superman, the mysterious knight from years ago that won battles with only a shield and his ax. 

Over time, Kara’s burning muscles turned into something Winn suggested as steel. Everyday, she went out into the fields with Alex to pull back the taut strings of a bow, every muscle screaming at her to let go. She persisted, and arguably became as strong as Kal. In thirteen months, she could wield a claymore sword like it was an extension of her body.

Two years later, Kara’s head was sitting in between Lena’s legs. 

Lena moaned out loud, and Kara glanced up at her.

“I _ hate _writing so much,” Lena grumbled, flexing her fingers and rotating her wrist with a painful look. “I stopped writing two hours ago and my hand is still cramping.”

Kara laughed at her, looking up at the ceiling and Lena’s little frown. “Let me fix it?”

Lena’s frown grew bigger, and she looked down at Kara. “The last time you were ‘gonna fix it’, my wrist cracked like Lex’s back in the morning.”

“And it helped!”

“It hurt!”

“A price to pay for beauty,” Kara deadpanned.

Lena slapped her cheek lightly, laughing joyfully with her best friend. Kara got up from Lena’s folded lap and sat up, facing her with her hand up as an invitation. Lena agreed begrudgingly, letting Kara’s fingers to wrap tightly around Lena’s wrist. Then Kara snapped Lena’s wrist forward and she couldn’t help but snort at the yelp Lena made. Though Kara had to admit, the crack Lena’s wrist made was loud enough for her to cringe.

“See? All better,” Kara cooed. Lena was rubbing her wrist with her other hand, playfully glaring at Kara.

“I will never understand how you know so much about fixing cramps,” Lena sighed. She laid her back against the wall, the soft mattress under them creaking under the new shift of pressure.

Kara only smiled at her, uttering a “It’s a secret” before getting up to place her book on Lena’s dresser. Of course she knew why. Months and months of being Supergirl meant she constantly had to go complain to her sister about the many aches in her body. Sometimes, when Alex didn’t know the answer, they’d sneak her to James Olsen’s humble home. The man had more experiences with using ointments than both the Danvers combined, because his mother was a talented apothecary. They would’ve went to Eliza, but the poor woman would’ve had a heart attack seeing Kara like that. 

Kara laid back down on Lena’s bed, dramatically exhaling out and swinging her arms over her head to rest on them. Lena put her legs over Kara’s stomach, chewing on the end of her thumb’s fingernail while she read through the written half of the essay she was tasked to write. 

“You know our tutor won’t be coming here again until next week, right?” Kara asked her in all seriousness.

“I know,” Lena sighed. She said no more than that.

Frowning, Kara gently tapped Lena’s legs to signal her to move. She pushed herself up and faced the side of Lena’s body. She studied her best friend’s face for a long, drawn moment. The candle light in her Lady’s room provided enough soft amber hues to distinguish the greens and blues in Lena’s eyes. Though right now, they were downcasted to a piece of paper with a much more dull grey. Lena’s teeth nibbled on her thumbnail.

“It’s been two years since you did anything bad, Lena,” she said softly.

  
Lena’s entire body stiffened. She didn’t respond to Kara, however.

Kara sighed, pushing herself further up, her back almost parallel to the wall. She nudged Lena with her foot, then drew them to her chest. 

“Or more like, two years since you got _ caught _doing anything bad,” Kara laughed. Lena didn’t laugh with her, though the tension in her friend’s shoulders were starting to dissipate. For two years, they did nothing but spend time together. On their most well-behaved days, they studied hard and quizzed each other during lunch and horseback rides around the land. On their less-behaved days, well, most of it was spent driving Lord Lex up a wall. 

Thankfully, Lex never caught them. He always blamed it on the delinquent little boys of the farmhands in his land, though Kara was certain he knew otherwise. As unnerving as Lord Lex’s icy voice and plantation decisions were, he never jeopardized his sister’s happiness. Especially when Lillian Luthor went away on her spontaneous leaves, he basically showered his sister with the kind of love Kal gave Kara. 

The only difference was that Lex disregarded his sister’s brilliance. 

“Kara, does it ever bother you that being my friend means you have to live everyday hoping I didn’t mess something up for you to be thrown onto a dirty floor and caned?”

“No.” Kara shrugged at her, her voice oozing with legitimate calm. “You know I’m tougher than that.”

“I know.” Lena gave her a bristled laugh. She folded her paper in half and set it down, still gripping it with her hands. They trembled slightly, and Kara was overcome with the urge to wrap her arms around her. Lena was looking forward, staring at the candle burning slowly on its wick. Her eyes danced with the flame. “Sometimes, I forget that you were— and other times, that’s all that I could think about.”

Lena danced around Kara’s official name in the castle like it was the flame on top of her candle.

  
“Don’t feel guilty,” Kara told her gently. She slithered her way to the adjacent wall, pressing her cheek against Lena’s shoulder. She took Lena’s hand in hers, entangling them for the comfort she knew Lena was aching for. “I don’t know if it helps you whenever I say it but I’ll say it again. Talking to you, studying with you, _ being _with you— that is worth every single lash I get on my back for every innocent mistake you make.”

Lena rolled her head to rest on top of Kara’s. Kara closed her eyes, conscious to the way Lena’s shoulders rose and fell with her breathing. 

“You’re the reason I do my best not to do anything bad,” Lena laughed softly. “To do anything to put you in danger.”

Kara’s heart lurched in her throat. 

She brought Lena’s hand up to her lips and kissed the first knuckle she felt. Dropping it, she inhaled slowly. Lena had no idea that she didn’t mind getting hurt for her because Kara was the same vigilante that stalked the night sky, bruises on her best days and stitches on her worst. She hid every single wound on her body to prevent the heartache from Lena, knowing full well that her best friend would be crushed and _ wrecked _knowing that even when she was National City’s most disciplined lady, Kara Danvers was out there being nearly pummeled to death.

Sticks, whips, stones on her back were so close to ricocheting off her body. Her skin hardened into calluses. She was like her cousin— a person made out of steel. But Lena doesn’t know that, Lena thinks she’s only Kara, her fumbly best friend. 

Kara exhaled. 

She can’t ever know.


End file.
